swestrup | Work and Awake are too similar...

So, I had just barely gotten up, was sipping the beginnings of my first coffee of the day, and blearily trying to focus on my email when K, the entrepreneur phoned.

*sigh*

I think I panicked him yesterday. He indicated that he would NOT be able to pay the stipend to me that he thought he would, and that he would not be able to pay me anything until he got money from his Investors. As a result I told him that I was going back to spending half my time on other projects that might be able to get me some money, and that if we hadn't seen any signifigant results by this time in October, I was going to walk.

So, now he phoned me up and told me all the leads he was persuing. Bleah. This I DO NOT need, and if he does it again I'll have to tell him so. Its not that I think the project has no potential. Its not that I think he can't eventually get money. What I think is that he is FAR, FAR further from getting money than he thinks he is. Telling me all of the potential things he is trying will NOT engage my enthusiasm, it will just annoy the hell ouf of me. What I need in order to believe in his company is someone with money telling us that he will cut us a cheque. In lieu of that, a meeting with someone who has money, who is able to articulate what it is that he needs from us, and what the process is for getting money. So far, I haven't had that.

When I first talked to K, he indicated that he had received some money, but that it wasn't much, and wasn't readily available. He then said that he was expecting a much larger cash infusion in three weeks. That was, you may note, three weeks ago, and I have since learned that the 'some money' he received was a line of credit from a bank, and it had nothing to do with investor confidence. The larger cash infusion was apparantly based on the naive notion that we would show up at the investors place with some sort of written business plan, and be handed a cheque. I *KNOW* things never work that way.

*double sigh*

So, now that I've told K this, he is acting just like Don did at Strategy First when I told him that he was being irrationally optimistic. Rather than try to convince me that the optimism was rational, Don would always try and engage my emotions sufficiently so that I would lose my rationality. It doesn't work like that with me, and it irritates me immensely.

You know, I hope this avionics company succeeds. I really, honestly do, and I will give continue to give of my time and effort to attempt to make it so, but I now think the odds of this company paying me any money before I have to declare personal bankruptcy has dropped to 10%.

Damn.